"Joining the Linux Foundation is one of many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming," Mike Sartain, a key member of the Linux team at Valve said. "Through these efforts we hope to contribute tools for developers building new experiences on Linux, compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux, and ultimately deliver an elegant and open platform for Linux users."

Mark my words: Valve will do for Linux gaming what Android did for Linux mobile. Much crow will be eaten by naysayers in a few years.

The only way to get a large number of games built to play on Linux (SteamOS) is to build a good cross platform competitor to DirectX. It needs to be easy to use and high performance. Once they get it built they need Nvidia and AMD to include it in their chips.